


Basting Stitch

by coldcobalt



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: 1960s, Body Horror Metaphors for Fun and Profit, First Kiss, M/M, Masturbation, Panic Attacks, Pre-Roche, Resolved Sexual Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, absolutely nuclear levels of sexual frustration, kind of, slow burn more like dumpster fire, world's most depressing handjob
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldcobalt/pseuds/coldcobalt
Summary: After Nite Owl’s uniform fails, Rorschach assists with repairs. The resulting praise affects him more than anticipated.(Or: Rorschach realizes he's better than Daniel at something, and he's completely unprepared for it.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> GN-verse. A huge thanks to my beta-reader, shag!

Herald Square is a blank canvas under flickering streetlights, desolate in the predawn quiet. In the shadow cast by the clock tower and its ridiculous owl sculptures, a mugger squirms against Rorschach’s iron grip.

“Hey, whoa, Spots, this is a misunderstanding—"

Rorschach winds his hands tighter into the man’s grubby t-shirt and lets his mask do the talking. In his periphery, he can see Nite Owl leaning down, helping the victim (a woman, blood oozing from her split lip) with a proffered hand and a reassuring word.

“Situation seems straightforward.” He leans in closer, voice rough as he can make it. “Drop the wallet.”

A floral billfold falls from the mugger’s now-shaking hands. Rorschach kicks it backwards without breaking his line of sight. Behind him, the woman stands, shakily, supporting her weight on Nite Owl’s arm.

“ _Shit_ , man,” the mugger says, idiotic goatee twitching, “listen—”

It is hubris alone that stops Rorschach from noticing the mugger’s hands disappearing; simple arrogance that causes him to ignore the telltale click of the butterfly knife.

There’s a flash of steel, a blur of motion as his partner twists to avoid the assailant, and then—

The wound gapes, splitting Nite Owl from shoulder to sternum. He staggers back with a stifled gasp, choking on sudden panic. 

_Gauze. Sutures, in a bolthole on Thirty-first—_ and Rorschach should be pursuing the mugger that’s sprinting across the square in opportunistic escape, but he has more pressing matters to address.

He has only stitched up Nite Owl a few times before— a forehead gash from a bad window break, an upper-back wound from the jagged edge of a fire escape — but those had been small things, and _what if —_

From his partner, a bark of laughter.

Nite Owl stands, leans his body against the cold stone side of the clocktower, chest heaving, hand splayed over his face in unmistakable relief.

“He missed me.”

Nite Owl laughs again, and the hazy grin that blooms below the cowl is Daniel peeking through.

“Can you believe it? My costume ripped.”

\-----

“Yeah,” Daniel is saying. “Yeah, okay, you’re right: it’s a no-go on that chestpiece.”

They’re sitting in well-worn chairs next to Daniel’s workbench, the ruined bulk of Nite Owl’s uniform splayed like a lab specimen across its metal surface. Under the halogen-bulb haze, the seam where shoulder meets torso gapes like an open mouth.

The partnership is still a tenuous thing, squares of rough-stitched experience bound together in patchwork union. It’s clear their strengths are complementary—Nite Owl’s easy brilliance, Rorschach’s ruthlessness—the eighteen months that they’ve been collaborating have exceeded Rorschach’s wildest expectations.

Still, sometimes his partner catches him off-guard. For such a smart man, Daniel can be so _stupid._

“Never was any good at sewing,” Daniel says, brow furrowed in concentration. “That section took me hours.” His gaze hasn’t moved from the costume in several minutes; he runs a hand nervously through sweat-drenched hair, over and over.

Rorschach traces one gloveless finger on the blown seam’s underside; it seems taboo to be touching the costume this way, to be touching it at all. The stitches are rough, unevenly-spaced; the pale skin of his palm shows where he slides it underneath the gaps. The clues are coming together here and he doesn’t like what he sees.

“Did you sew this by hand.”

The horror that flickers across Daniel’s face is entirely telling. 

His hands raise in defense, chastened. “Just that one section—my sewing machine’s broken and I got caught up on something else—” 

How distractible, inadvisable; how utterly like Daniel to spread himself so thin. Scraps of partially-completed projects line the workshop: half-constructed gadgets, the carcasses of ideas left unfinished. A rudimentary exoskeleton that Daniel has been babbling about for weeks sits in the corner, a concept that Rorschach expects will prove disastrous.

It isn’t a game, what they do; not a child’s fantasy of knights and tables, and Nite Owl would do well to remember that.

“It’ll have to be a manual repair, too.” Daniel stifles a yawn with the back of his hand. “I’m gonna be up all morning fixing this.” It is already nearing six; Walter has to be back on Thirty-fourth in less than three hours.

Rorschach imagines Daniel hunched over the too-low table, fumbling incompetently with a needle and thread. Imagines the costume splitting open again after a sudden movement, only this time there is an arc of copper blood, metallic in the dark—

He will have to take matters into his own hands.

\-----

Walter’s sewing machine at work is defective; a haphazard mess of secondhand parts that work less frequently than not. His absentee supervisor tells him it will be replaced—repeatedly, often—but at this point, Rorschach expects no miracles. He’s become well-acquainted with impromptu repairs.

By contrast, the unit on the table is sleek, practically decadent: an original Singer in pristine condition. Rorschach can’t imagine how much it must have cost. He feels uneasy just touching it. 

At his side, Daniel hovers, lips a flat line, arms tightly crossed. Concern for his equipment, no doubt. The casing opens with a click. 

As Rorschach expects, the fix is deceptively simple. One of the bobbins has a spiderwebbed crack, a minute imperfection that has worked the thread into endless snarls, rendering the entire unit useless. He coaxes the knots loose with practiced fingers, and thread by careful thread, the interior of the machine inches free.

He tightens the screw on the bobbin casing a half-turn, firmly wedges it back into alignment. 

“Huh.” Daniel says, amazed. A blunt finger traces the side of the panel, probes into the machine’s metal innards. “You’re good at that. Where did you—”

Sometimes, rarely, when Rorschach lands an especially devastating punch—grinding his knuckles across an assailant's jawbone, the bruised purple of his cuffs splattered with red—Nite Owl’s eyes widen in fascination, in unspoken, implicit encouragement.

That same expression sits on Daniel’s face now, and without the goggles and cowl to mask it, the force of his approval is almost too much to bear. It’s unnecessary. Daniel would have solved the problem on his own, eventually.

Rorschach closes the machine’s casing, depresses the pedal. The Singer flares to life, the quiet whirr of well-machined components like a city waking. The chair screeches when he pushes it back. 

“Tomorrow” Rorschach says, folding his collar up against the damp of the service tunnel. “Will fix your suit properly.”

“You can _sew_?” Daniel asks, incredulous, and Rorschach does not catalogue the wonder in that sentence, doesn’t pay it any mind.

Walter’s civilian occupation is a stopgap measure: something to allow him, barely, to afford to eat and sleep; to fulfill the minimum of human needs necessary to wear the mask for one more night. In truth, he dislikes it: the sweltering factory, the piles of degenerate fabric.

But. His partner is an engineer: a certifiable genius, an educated man with fingers that have coaxed sodder and circuit boards into mechanical wonders. And to have someone like Daniel in need of his assistance, however slight—

It is a small thing, to compensate for his partner’s weakness.

\-----

 _You’re good at that,_ he hears again, striding out of the warehouse; an unspoken echo thick with wonder and something else entirely. His fists tighten in his pockets, the leather of his gloves creaking.

He compartmentalizes the memory, dissecting it into smaller and smaller segments until there is nothing left to feel.

\-----

The factory floor is a maelstrom of color and sound, a roiling chaos that Walter has always, always hated. Row after row of machines whirr discordantly, a hundred seamstresses—women, all women—shout across the too-hot space in a hundred different tongues. Sweat beads on his brow, trickles between his shoulder blades.

Thirty seconds into his first blouse, the pulley jams. A thin veneer of factory grit crunches under his fingers as he jostles the machine into compliance, muttering under his breath.

Walter thinks of the Nest (clean, cool, quiet) and the Singer (precise, well-made), and this is a dangerous comparison to make, to think that either of these resources are anything other than borrowed, are anything approaching necessary.

Instead, he thinks of Daniel, which is worse.

_Daniel would watch him sew, would look on, pleasantly surprised, clearly impressed. Appreciative. Would be generous with his compliments._

Rounding the ruffled corner of a sleeve, the pulley jams again. Walter smacks the carriage with weary precision.

_Rorschach would hold himself in check, every inclination held on the tight leash of his impeccable self-control. As always, he would give Daniel nothing: no snippets of information, no glimpses of the man beneath the inkspatter mask. Instead, he would let the praise roll over him like the black tide of the Hudson, all-encompassing, all-consuming—_

The second shirt of the day is finished; Walter throws it into the pile and starts on another.

_Daniel’s half-moon mouth would open in awe at the dexterity of Rorschach’s fingers: on machinery; on fabric; on the hard planes of Nite Owl’s armor, repairing the rip with professional skill. Like patching a stab wound: skin pinched together, viscera held inside with loops of nylon, every knot immaculate—_

_(And Daniel would lean in close, dark eyes lidded under dark lashes, breath hot against the mask, his jaw tilted with perfect intent—_

_Would press his mouth to the pulseline of Rorschach’s neck, whispering—)_

Walter very nearly runs the needle right across his hand.

\-----

The shift bell rings. The factory floor sways under his feet when he stands. 

Every single one of the blouses he has sewn today has taken something from him, made worse by the glittering monstrosity of thousands of decorative sequins. A cramp strings itself like barbed wire across his shoulders.

(It’s not the only ache he feels: coiled low, insidious; a lack of sleep is not the only reason he sways on unsteady feet. He is a cracked bobbin of a human, and the ruinous things he wants can only be hidden so well from himself)

Even though he is tired to the core and the brownstone is forty blocks north in sweltering summer heat, Walter refuses to allow himself the luxury of a subway ride, as punishment for his transgressions. 

\-----

The clock in the Nest strikes the hour. It’s two AM, and the city is dead, save for the occasional overhead rumble of a garbage truck rolling slowly down West Seventy-ninth.

Behind the glasses, Daniel’s eyes are inscrutable: an engineer’s gaze, calculating. He nurses a cup of coffee, and he seems calm, but from the way his eyes keep flicking back to Nite Owl’s suit—nervously, compulsively—Rorschach knows he isn’t. 

He understands just how much a uniform can mean.

The pins jutting from Rorschach’s mouth are cold on his tongue, the sensation a comfort in its familiarity. He slots them through the armscye seam in even increments. Compared to Walter’s workstation, the Singer is whisper-quiet; it doesn’t jam once, not even when he flips the dial to backstitch, and by the time Rorschach trims the leftover thread, it’s impossible to see that there was ever damage at all.

When he runs his hand over the repair (feeling the smooth texture of the chestpiece under his ungloved palm, fabric brimming with latent power: like a thunderhead, like a force of nature), it is to check the stability, and nothing more.

“Huh.” Dan says, leaning over. He lifts the suit, pulls the fabric one way, then another, judges it satisfactory. “That looks solid. Thanks.”

Rorschach grunts. As if there was ever any doubt.

And then he pauses, frozen, because Daniel has twisted around on his stool, is running careful, calloused fingers over the trench discarded earlier in the evening, strewn unceremoniously across the back of an empty chair.

“Y’know, I should have known.” Daniel’s glasses catch the light from the overhead bulb; white light flashing: there, gone. “Your coat never seems to have any rips in it—none that stay put, anyhow.” He runs a wide palm down the front of the garment and Rorschach feels an emotion he cannot compartmentalize away or name. “This is really delicate work.”

It is vanity that leads Rorschach to do this, to patch up all the little disfigurements of his uniform, a compulsion he has not yet been entirely able to tamp down. But he cannot strike fear into the city’s heart looking like the refuse he strives to eliminate.

“Force of habit,” he mutters, hoping to distract Daniel from his impolite probing. It doesn’t work. The fingers don’t retreat but instead trace the cotton with infinite care. 

It is suddenly slightly difficult to breathe.

“You did a lot here: hidden pockets, reinforced stitching. Solid, efficient, some real attention to detail.” Daniel pushes his glasses up, stopping their slow slide down the bridge of his nose. “I’d love to pick your brain about costume design sometime.” He slides his thumb on the bottom hem like a caress; lifts it to eye-level with clear curiosity, fascination, _respect_ for Rorschach’s craftsmanship—

( _You’re good at that,_ Rorschach thinks, before he can stop himself, hot flush of blood blooming traitorously across the nape of his neck, elsewhere—)

He snatches the coat off of the chair with a growl.

“Happy to assist, Daniel” he says, in a voice that is anything but. “Must be leaving. Trust you’ll take better care of your equipment going forward.” As he strides across the workshop, kicking an errant box out of his path, his partner at least has the good grace to look chagrined.

That morning, tangled in his threadbare sheet, hands trapped between his knees to curtail their wandering, Walter does not let himself think of deft hands on his coat, his suit. Warm words complimenting his strengths, spoken by the only man to ever notice them.

\-----

Two weeks later, the Archimedes drifts beneath the storm-roughened surface of the East River. Tonight, they have cuffed a pair of The Gimmick’s goons, turned them over to the police with important information extracted. Anticipation hums like electricity beneath Rorschach’s skin—six months, a year, and they will have the entire operation behind bars. In the wake of their partnership, New York’s underworld doesn’t stand a chance.

“So.” Nite Owl says, then lapses into silence. He’s been ruminating on something all night: strangely quiet, given the circumstances. Rorschach strips off one bloodstained glove, then another, and waits for his partner to get to the point.

The river churns outside the windows. 

“I’ve been thinking.” The cowl slides off. Daniel’s hair is stuck to his forehead in ridiculous whorls. “About my suit.”

(Rorschach has steadfastly avoided thinking about the repair in any capacity: a challenge, sometimes, especially when Nite Owl’s gauntleted fingers trip unconsciously over the repaired seam, as they are doing now.)

“I’m clearly in over my head on this sewing thing. You obviously have some experience. How would you feel—” He cuts himself off, tries again. Without his glasses, he doesn’t quite seem to know where to look. “Would you—”

Rorschach huffs.

“I want to overhaul my costume. And I’d like your help.”


	2. Chapter 2

The decision is simple. He cannot permit this. Cannot allow himself to waste any of his meager time, already stretched thin between the warring obligations of work and patrol.

But. It cannot hurt to give his partner a few pointers, at least.

\---

Twin cups of coffee steam on the kitchen table, decorative mugs garish in the quiet room. Dawn filters in through thin curtains, catching the Owlsuit with a ferocity that hints at a blazing day to come.

This is the latest that Rorschach has ever remained in Daniel’s home. The way light strikes its sleek surfaces—blinding against steel and formica, illuminating hollows usually left in shadow during the early morning’s dead hours—is entirely unfamiliar, a new facet of his partner’s life.

Rorschach finds this intimacy tolerable.

Daniel muffles a yawn. “So. What’s the plan?”

“Could reconstruct uniform from original pattern.” A safe prospect, mapping butcher paper to cloth, cutting bolts of fabric and piecing them together; Daniel’s engineering melded with his textile expertise, a perfect union of both of their skill sets. In truth: not much of a project.

A moment of silence stretches across the table.

“Uh,” Daniel says, shifting in his chair. He wipes his hands on his cargo shorts; the tone of his voice suggests that Rorschach will dislike whatever he’s about to say.

“You didn’t use a pattern.”

“Yeah. No,” Daniel says, not meeting his line of sight. “I just kind of winged it.”

A terrible pun; Rorschach strikes down the momentary, irritating impulse to acknowledge it aloud. Instead, he settles himself at the table to survey the situation.

The results are discouraging. No bar tacks on the collar or closures. No backstitching to speak of. Poor anchoring on the majority of the seams, and the interior is finished with the bare minimum of care. The choice and cut of fabric are mercifully sufficient, but there are multiple areas that speak of complacency.

Rorschach handles the grey material with professional tact; touches a hand to all the suit’s zippers and clasps.

The plan, he determines, will be this. His partner will use the old costume for a time, will continue their nightly patrols uninterrupted. But in the interim, he will supervise Daniel in forging a new suit from scratch, all previous deficiencies in construction overwritten. Unlike the previous model, this iteration will be crafted with no room for error.

Nite Owl is a rare beacon of justice, a savior of a broken city. It is essential that he look the part.

Rorschach lays the old costume back on the table, all its unfortunate secrets newly laid bare. 

Daniel looks on in anticipation, wreathed in light from the window behind him; his silhouette is still against the blown-gold skyline. 

This is a tactical oversight on a massive scale, but Rorschach realizes, with certainty, that there is only one real choice.

“Can assist you with a pattern. Will need some supplies.” 

He recognizes exactly what this will mean: sleepless nights bleeding out into exhausted days, chaining himself by unbreakable oath to a months-long commitment. But this is what his partner needs from him; he knows that this is _right._

Daniel beams. He reaches around a mug, grabs one of his omnipresent notepads—this one is mercifully birdless, at least—and prints “shopping list” across the top in careful, looping script.

“Okay, shoot.” 

The excitement in his voice pulls something tight in Rorschach’s chest.

\---

Several days later, a handful of unlabeled bags appear in the workshop, items procured with the ease that only discretionary income can bring.

\---

Making the pattern is a predictable disaster.

They’ve touched before—a shoulder to lean on after a concussive blow, adrenaline-soaked fumbles with needles and sutures and the spectre of death between them—but this is different. 

This is predatory, perverse, handling an unaware partner with hands that shake with lust; no better than a john or subway pervert. Daniel looks on, unaware, and a wave of panic rises in Rorschach’s throat. The breath he’s been holding hisses out between clenched teeth.

“You planning on finishing up? My arms are going numb.”

Rorschach shifts a section of the newly-cut butcher paper over Daniel’s bare chest. His eyes burn with the past few sleepless nights; he is pushing his body to its inexorable limits, siphoning valuable energy from reserves already stretched tight by his daytime obligations.

Still. If he means to help Nite Owl, he means to do it correctly. 

“Shape seems sufficient. May have to alter front facing to accommodate the cape.” He adjusts a pin, carefully avoiding the skin of Daniel’s torso.

(He should be wearing his gloves for this. He isn’t.)

“Hey, you’re in charge here.” Daniel rolls his shoulders in a shrug. Inches away from Rorschach’s face, broad ropes of muscle shift. “But seriously, I can’t feel my hands.”

Rorschach grunts, trims a section of paper a fraction of an inch. “Not my problem.”

He has plans for the side panels, intricate seamwork that will allow more freedom of movement and better heat management. He may be able to figure out a way to work in the triangle motif from the cape and cowl, if he puts his mind to it.

“Finished. Don’t move.”

Rorschach disassembles the finished armature, pin by pin; above him, Daniel’s large hands flex and curl in the open air, upper body shaking with the effort of keeping them aloft. They remain there as the final scrap of paper is removed, and a bead of sweat tracks down, down, down, across Daniel’s clavicle and through the whorls of hair on his chest.

Rorschach’s mouth is very dry.

(Walter is eight again; a man paws at his mother’s open shirt, sweating and red-faced and monstrous, pants tented obscenely. Even this young, he knows how to feel disgust.)

The moment strings between the two of them like thread, tangling.

“Are you—?” Daniel says, slowly, eyebrows raising. Rorschach throws the scissors down with sudden fury.

_(little shit)_

He spits a thinly-veiled excuse—an unfulfilled obligation, a sudden illness; he doesn’t remember which—and turns against the questioning noise that Daniel makes in response. The darkness of the access tunnel does nothing to hide his shame.

That morning, he dreams of forcing Daniel against a wall, bending him flush across a table; pictures inflicting the only type of violence that he doesn’t understand at all.

\---

A rat skitters in the darkness; at the mouth of the alleyway, Rorschach crosses and uncrosses his arms over and over, the very image of patience. By now, haste is no longer a concern: their quarry has long since slipped their grasp.

Nite Owl shuffles into his field of vision, mouth downturned, mortified.

“Finished?”

His partner swears under his breath, mutters something about coffee. “Alright. You win.” He pinches the bridge of his nose over the cowl and Rorschach _had_ warned him about this, specifically. “Let’s talk about that extra zipper.”

Rorschach revels in his victory, an ongoing argument well and truly won. He flips his journal open to the growing list of costume adjustments, adds another item to the agenda.

\---

The factory screams around him like a charnel house, but, for once, Walter pays it no attention. His mind is elsewhere.

_Nite Owl would corner him in the Nest, take Rorschach’s crooked wrists and bend him back against the workshop table. He would be all grace and coiled power, but Rorschach would rise against him: reciprocal, evenly matched in strength and skill, and Daniel would be undone._

_(Good at— good at—)_

_Daniel’s face would flush with blood, not from a brawl or battle but from the machinations of Rorschach’s hands, pupils blown behind the goggles, struck silent—_

_And Rorschach would pin him against the unforgiving floor, confident and in perfect control; would rock into Daniel with slow purpose—_

A grinding whirr, then a grating mechanical screech: Walter’s machine has run out of thread mid-stitch. This is something he is supposed to monitor.

It is a very long moment before he is in any state to stand. 

The garments that he finishes that day are worthless, embroidery thread gnarled in sequential knots.

\---

Walter begins to skip breakfast, eats nothing on his lunch breaks. His body has insisted on betraying him, so he will bring it to heel.

If Rorschach’s vision greys out occasionally during patrol, leaving him unmoored and weightless on silent city streets, then it is exactly what he deserves.

\---

Slow jazz drifts through the workshop, low and mournful and irritating, like rain on a corrugated roof. Rorschach is a guest, so he abides it, barely. 

Daniel sits at his side, humming unselfconsciously under his breath, smelling of sweat and engine oil, and that is irritating too.

“Shit. What if I just—”

Rorschach reaches across the table, slaps novice hands away from the Singer before they can do more damage. He snaps the feed dogs back into alignment with a click.

It is unexpected, how bad his partner is at this. Unfathomable.

“Up.”

“What?”

“Get _up”_ Rorschach says, with an abrupt motion of his hand, and Daniel’s face falls. He stands, chagrined. Rorschach sinks into the still-warm chair in his place, kicking one of the boxes stored under the table out of his way. 

“Pay attention.”

This is an action he has performed a thousand times on a thousand different garments: blouses; degenerate, frilly underthings; the virtuous, dusk-dark purple of his suit, a lifetime ago. He has repeated the process so often that it is purely muscle memory, ten years of mindless repetition carved into his core.

No other instance has felt this monumental.

“This is a basting stitch,” he says, like he is walking Daniel through an especially complex tactical maneuver: even, level. “For joining two pieces of fabric. Used before the final sewing pass to hold everything together, temporarily.” 

The cloth runs across the Singer’s faceplate, whisper-soft; Rorschach guides it with steady hands. At his elbow, Daniel leans in, arms braced on the table, so close that Rorschach can feel the heat thrown off by his partner’s body.

He ignores this, and continues to work, feeding grey spandex through the machine’s maw until the seam is secure. Somewhere, against a piano backdrop, a saxophone trills, then falls silent.

“Your turn.”

The edge of Daniel’s mouth quirks up in a familiar half-smile, and he sets his hands to the task. The small spark of pride in Rorschach’s chest would be obscene, were he to acknowledge it. So he doesn’t.

\---

Walter twists in his sheets.

His hands are tightened to closed fists at his sides, and the mattress is rough where it scrapes against his abdomen, because he is thinking of—

_Daniel watching him sew, kind eyes wide with admiration; Nite Owl on a tenement rooftop, cape flowing endlessly under a waning moon—_

He whines, slaps his sweating palms to the bed, but the need for friction coils in him, and his hips jerk of their own accord. The pillow is cold where his face is pressed to it.

The pressure is unbearable, but he has earned every second of this agony.

_Daniel on his back, wearing Nite Owl’s easy confidence, the muscles of his spread thighs shifting as Rorschach looms over them. The curve of his lips, curled in awe, whispering—_

_(You’re good at that.)_

Except the tone is wrong, not drawn from memory at all; it’s pitched low and dangerous in the licentious dark.

Walter’s hand slides below the waistband of his underwear.

_—you’re—_

And before Walter can forestall the impulse, he has grasped himself and begun to stroke. His toes curl.

_—you—_

_You little shit_ , howls his furious conscience, in perfect imitation of a long-dead woman: _retard, whoreson, novice, nothing,_ and how could he ever think himself **_worth—_**

He wrenches his hand away, claws wild fingers into the thin skin of his thighs, digs his nails in until pain arcs up his legs like a cigarette burn and the urge is gone. He is nothing he is nothing he is nothing _he wants nothing—_

Thus subdued, he curls crooked hands to his chest and lies there, shaking, until dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

Rorschach rucks his mask up against the stagnant air, spits a bright mouthful of blood onto the pavement. The night is impossibly humid; beneath the costume, his undershirt is tacky with sweat.

Down the hill, several men sit handcuffed to a chain-link fence. Nite Owl stands watch next to them, toying with his belt console.

“Yeah, Fort Tryon, further up the hill by the overlook. Drug deal interrupted.” A burst of static, a garbled response. “Forty pounds altogether, if I had to guess—”

He covers the receiver with a gauntleted hand, mouths something questioning at Rorschach.

“Heroin.”

“—Heroin, but not all in one place. There was a bit of a scuffle.” Another burst of static. “Yeah, we can stay at the scene. Yes. Thank you.”

A click, and the console disappears. Rorschach flicks a spot of white residue off of his suit with distaste. Sloppy, these criminals; why anyone would think to transport powder in plastic bags is beyond him. 

“They’re sending a squad car over from Kingsbridge.” A pause. “You okay?” 

Nite Owl shifts his weight from one foot to another with poorly concealed concern. It’s unnecessary. The criminal’s right hook had been a lucky shot, nothing more; the inside of Rorschach’s masticated cheek will heal in time.

In truth, this is the latest in a long list of worrisome tactical errors. Rorschach’s ability to concentrate has been less than reliable for several weeks, worn down by factors entirely inside of his control. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand; the glove comes away with a residual smear of red.

These slip-ups are unacceptable. He will be better.

“Fine. Nothing broken.” 

Something pinches minutely in Nite Owl’s expression. “Yeah. Okay.” 

Across the river, the Palisades glitter like broken glass. Nite Owl stares out over the exapanse of water for a long minute, expression unreadable, one foot braced against the low stone wall ringing the path. His cape catches the breeze and whips around his ankles; he looks carved of stone, like a monument to justice enacted: every bit a conservator of their fractured, fumbling city.

“About this whole costume project, I—”

Nite Owl turns from the overlook, visible sliver of his face pulled tight with something unidentifiable: it looks almost like guilt, but Rorschach cannot think of anything for Daniel to feel guilty for.

(If anything, Rorschach should be the one paralyzed by shame, for perverting the partnership into this degenerate obsession. For standing at the tail end of a successful bust, looming victoriously over the prostrate forms of city scum, and ignoring everything but the way distant headlights illuminate the planes of his partner’s body—)

An artificial sound. The night is shattered by the wail of sirens; the red-blue-red-blue of a squad car’s lights spill across the path.

Nite Owl’s mouth closes. Opens again. His lips flatten to a thin line.

“—I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

The rest of the night passes in a series of moments: Nite Owl giving the officers a play-by-play of the bust; Nite Owl helping to load the subdued criminals into the squad car. Daniel steering the Archimedes south, hands leaden over the dashboard, a muscle in his cheek working, working.

\------

Their project cannot last forever. It ends the same way it began: in the Nest, before dawn. Evidence of their success lies prone on the cold metal table: a brown-and-grey garment, similar at first glance to the previous iteration, but now free of error. Powerful. Dangerous. Something to make every criminal in New York cower in deserved fear.

Something to keep scum up at night.

(Conversely, Rorschach cannot recall the last time he has slept. At the edges of his vision, the workshop blurs like a recurrent nightmare).

Dan runs a nervous hand through his wild hair. Even from several feet away, Rorschach can sense the excitement rolling off of him in waves. “Alright, run me through it. _The Care and Maintenance of Your Owl Suit_. What do I need to know?” 

“Just a uniform.” he grunts. “Self-explanatory.”

“C’mon”, Daniel says, and the knowing expression on his face is utterly infuriating. “I know there’s more to it than that.”

There is, in fact, more to it. Weeks of insomnolent nights: Rorschach walking like the woken dead through a fugue of patrols, body weightless and alien. Endless sessions of cut-refine-sew-make it _better_ ; the deliberate decision of a thousand stitches culminating in this pile of cloth.

Every part of the costume: every line, every hem whispers _just_ and _honorable_ and _good:_ every aspect that Nite Owl represents. 

Everything that Daniel is.

Rorschach smoothes the costume flat against the table: proper presentation, nothing more.

“Improved material selection. Reinforced seams.” And cloth that is actually cut on the bias, as it should be; and all trailing threads cut, and. The list goes on. They will be here all morning if he recites it in full. His fingers ache where they’re pressed to the material, tight enough to hurt.

Daniel grins. “Feels like we should be celebrating. Think I have some ice cream in the freezer, hang on.” He disappears up the basement steps.

And just like that, their project is at an end. Rorschach should be grateful to be unshackled from the weight of this obligation, should welcome the freedom from the fixation he has foolishly permitted himself. It should feel like relief.

It doesn’t.

Rorschach will no longer have an excuse for his unmitigated obsession, will no longer be able to couch it in the pretense of bridging Daniel’s shortcomings. His stomach clenches. His shoe clips a cardboard box, and he realizes he is pacing.

This new wave of anger is easier. Not at himself, for his deficient morals, but at Daniel: for enabling this, for his inability to finish his infinite projects, for leaving his workspace in abject disorder —

Rorschach hefts the box over his head. Somewhere, deep down, he recognizes this as a childish tantrum, but in the absence of other, more sufficient outlets, this seems essential. He will slam the cardboard into the cement floor with the full force of his ire.

Mid-motion, the lid slips off. 

The box’s contents fall to the floor; one of the items is a use-worn binder, text scrawled across the front in permanent marker. Rorschach picks it up.

He doesn’t move again for a very long time.

\----

“Sorry, bottle opener disappeared on me,” Daniel says, an eternity later. He thunders down the basement stairs, ice cream carton in one hand, six-pack of root beer in the other. He’s humming again.

“I know you don’t drink, so I left the beer upstairs, figured you’d prefer a floa—”

His eyes land on the binder.

“Oh,” Daniel says. He sets the food and drink down on the workshop table, turns to face Rorschach with the grim resignation of a man awaiting a firing squad. “Oh, damn.”

 _Nite Owl Suit: Project Proposal_ , says the first sheet on the binder’s interior, _1962._ Underneath the heading is a dizzying array of diagrams and measurement tables, typewritten neatly and annotated in Daniel’s confident hand. Rorschach turns the page with a sense of control he doesn’t feel.

 _Glossary of Sewing Terms_ , the next spread says, _Diagram of Stitches_. And mixed in with the rest of the box’s contents at Rorschach’s feet, sits a butcher-paper sewing pattern, every curve and cut pristine.

“You knew. You. _Knew_.” Rorschach snarls. “Could sew this whole time.”

Of course. _Of course._ Meticulous, brilliant Daniel, able to forge airships and grappling guns, circuitry and steel knitting like nylon fibers under his gifted hands. Capable. Confident. An engineering prodigy. Of course he would have researched his ascent into vigilantism.

Of course he would have made a _pattern_.

Daniel retreats, hemmed in by Rorschach’s presence as he stalks forward with righteous fury. His eyes widen.

“No. Hey, it’s not like that— You saw how slapdash my suit was before. I mean, so I knew some of the basics, but—”. He raises his palms close, too close; they are nearly nose to nose. Rorschach’s hands flex with murderous intent.

Daniel’s breath ghosts against the mask.

“But when you offered to chip in, I figured: hey, he’s a tailor, he’d be better—”

Stupid stupid stupid, how easily Rorschach has been manipulated; cowed by soft words and watchful praise. And now, at the end of this betrayal, the ultimate insult: Daniel thinks him a tailor.

Believes that Rorschach could hold a skilled profession, a trade; could be a _businessman_ , instead of working menial labor at a filthy sweatshop station with an irreparable sewing machine. Is deluded enough to think that Walter could have accomplished anything of consequence in the miserable, skittering carapace of his civilian life.

(That Daniel believes so strongly in him.)

“I’m not.” Rorschach spits, and kisses him.

\----

Daniel makes a quiet sound against the latex. Rorschach braces for the blow, for his head to rock back from the force of it. 

This is their partnership splintering along fracture lines, spiderwebbing into a thousand irreparable shards. This is Rorschach’s ribcage splitting in perfect halves, the disgorged evidence of his depravity spilling out like tar, miring his feet to the unforgiving floor and how foolish of him _(whoreson)_ to think there was ever any chance at escape—

This is—

This is.

This is Daniel cupping his chin, Nite Owl’s fire flaring in his eyes. There is no hand raised in anger, just a gentle, answering pressure on his lips, and even in this, the depth of his partner’s delusion is blinding. Rorschach has watched Nite Owl crush men’s noses into their skulls; has watched Daniel’s shoulders shake under the weight of their city’s sins. There is none of that violence here and he doesn’t _understand._

The storage cabinet clangs when he slams Daniel against it.

\-----

It comes to this: Daniel’s back pressed against the metal, Rorschach’s hands twisted in his lapels as they rut together.

At some point, Rorschach’s mask has rucked itself up over his nose; he doesn’t remember doing this, finds its absence disconcerting. He knows how he looks: sweating with arousal and panting like a dog, skin flushed a horrible red. His heart beats between his legs.

Daniel trails a wet mouth down Rorschach’s neck. His hands are fumbling with Rorschach’s fly and there is no reason for the electric thread of panic worming its way through the barest edges of Rorschach’s consciousness, none at all. 

“God,” Daniel keeps saying, voice rough, “God. Do you have any idea how long I’ve—”

The face Daniel is making is intolerable, too open and flushed with naked lust, and it is so much easier to thrash into the assailing touches, to lean forward and _bite_ , sinking his teeth into the crook of Daniel’s neck.

A moan, low and loud; Daniel places his hands on Rorschach’s hips, rolls against them like the tide. Rorschach’s body throbs with misplaced blood, and that’s all this is, all it should be: blood and harrowing sounds and nails clenched into palms tight enough to bruise—

The noise Daniel makes is familiar, so he bites down again. 

Daniel’s breath hisses between his teeth, a subverbal wince. _You’re hurting me_ , Rorschach remembers, wildly, and he doesn’t understand because isn’t that what this is supposed to _be?_

The button of Daniel’s slacks is cold against his sweat-slick palm, and he is _(hurting Daniel)_ not afraid, not afraid _not afraid—_

_(whoreson)_

_(bastard)_

_(filthy little animal)_

“Rorschach?”

(—he pictures his skin sloughing off, all the sin spilling from him like ash, like tar, like shadows shifting on rotting wallpaper, in alleyways, in the cramped closet he cowers in as his mother’s clients gibber and wail—)

“Hey, shh. Whoa.” Daniel whispers; when his sweating forehead presses against the mask, Rorschach feels a sudden impulse to thrash against his partner in attempted escape. Because violence, violence he can understand, but _this_ —

Daniel’s brow furrows. His face is flushed with concern. There is no saving this.

And Walter’s syntax—of course he is Walter here; weak Walter with his pathetic looping memories, an ouroboros of dark hallways and panting sounds and tidal, choking shame—is shaking itself to pieces. He is a silo: locked shut, rictus-tight, and he has no words left. 

A strong arm winds around Walter’s back: supporting him, holding him close. Daniel waits.

(Walter realizes, dimly, that he is trembling.)

Every nerve ending in Walter’s body flares at once, unrecognizable emotion strangling him from the inside out. But he is no coward, is no longer a child, and he will not hide from this.

“You sure you—”

Daniel’s other hand hovers on the jut of Walter's hip, above the open waistband of the pinstripes. 

“Yes.” he says, grabbing a thick wrist, leading Daniel down.

Daniel’s adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. He slides his palm beneath the fabric, grasps the worst part of Walter in a steady hand.

Despite himself, Walter nods.

And then Daniel’s hand begins to _move_ , and the last vestiges of language desert Walter entirely; all he knows is red roiling heat, the firm slide of skin, the overwhelming ache blooming like a fever through his core.

Terrible noises escape from his mouth, panicked and monstrous. He burrows his head into the solid plane of Daniel’s chest, eyes shut tight.

“Shh,” Daniel whispers, dipping his head down low, resting his chin on Walter’s head. “You’re okay. You’re good.”

_(you’re good)_

And Daniel presses his lips chastely to the crown of the mask: carefully, so carefully—

—and it’s— 

—and _he_ —

_(you’re good)_

_(you’re good)_

_(you’re_ **_good_** _)_

The ache blooms to something new, and Walter is undone.

\-----

Daniel’s arm remains wrapped around Rorschach’s back long after his breath stops hitching.

In his bed that night, for the first time in weeks, Walter thinks of nothing at all.

\-----

Leaves skitter on a cold wind; across the plaza, autumn has stained the park’s treeline a burnished red. The moon is a yellow spotlight high in the west.

Rorschach leans back against the wrought-iron gate of the park entrance, hands in his pockets against the chill.

“—So, what do you think?” Nite Owl is saying, face wreathed in shadow, “The Gimmick: he’s finished, right?”

“Will still attempt to protect his empire from prison, no doubt.” A leaf crunches under Rorschach’s heel. “But, temporarily: yes. Finished.”

The shadows slip across Nite Owl’s face as he shifts, and even in the half-light it’s clear that he’s smiling. “Hey, I couldn’t have done it without you. Really.”

Rorschach leans infinitesimally to his side, pressing the canvas shoulder of the trench against the bulk of Nite Owl’s arm. A gauntleted hand skates across his back in response, tripping carefully down the ridges of his spine.

(It still makes him uneasy, this new language of touch and insinuation. No matter. He will learn.)

Movement at the corner of his vision. It appears to be a scuffle: a man in a combative stance, a teenager cowing against a dilapidated bench. Something seems familiar about the situation, but the scenario is hardly a novelty in Manhattan after dark.

“Just the wallet, dude. No one needs to get hurt.” 

Then the mugger leans forward, face clipping into the range of the solitary streetlight, and Rorschach sees: The dirty t-shirt. The butterfly knife. 

The idiotic goatee.

Behind latex, the ghost of a smile. At Rorschach's signal, the partnership moves towards the criminal together, circling their prey.

The grunt of surprise that the mugger makes when Rorschach erupts from the shadows is unfathomably gratifying; the whine of pain when his arm is wrenched behind his back is even more so. The knife slips from his spasming grip and falls to the ground, forgotten.

“Hey, S-spots! Owly!” the mugger blurts, voice strained by the position and the weight of his misjudgment. “Oh, _shit.”_

Nite Owl twists in the diffuse moonlight, launching an uppercut into the mugger’s jaw with coiled grace. The tight lines of his new uniform shift with the movement, and every seam holds true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This was my first multi-chapter fic, and I can't tell you how much all your support meant to me!
> 
> As always, I really appreciate all the comments you leave, please let me know if there's anything you especially liked!


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